Maxim Dondyuk

INTER VITAM ET MORTEM

I’m a photographer, documentarist and visual artist.

Each my project is an in-depth study of the theme. I prefer to be a direct participant while shooting. Among the issues I had raised were the problem of tuberculoses in Ukraine; military patriotic upbringing of children in the secret camp in the Crimea mountains; the revolution in Ukraine and the aftermath of the war in the east of Ukraine. Recently I’ve been working on an archival project about Chernobyl, where I’m exploring the restricted areas before they were absorbed by the radioactive cloud in 1986.

War lets loose all the destructive forces of mankind against itself. What kind of insanity is this? War takes any meaning and breeds emptiness, that burns everything leaving just ruins. A person’s mind, traumatized after the war, reminds me of these deserted landscapes, that continue its existence misunderstood and forgotten.

This project is an exploration of territories of Eastern Ukraine devastated by the war. It’s about scars that wars leave in human souls, about emptiness and loneliness. To convey feelings more deeply, I’m using landscape photography, a more intimate approach. Sometimes thoughts of the past and the scars of war are much more painful for the people and the country that survived the war than the battles themselves. These feelings will never stop; they will remain for their whole lives.